The handling of articles frequently involves providing individual or a plurality of articles with an outer packaging.
In the case of individual articles, this is carried out for their improved protection and/or for their improved sales presentation.
In the case of a plurality of articles, a bundle of a plurality of articles is additionally achieved by the outer packaging.
Bundles represent an effective way of enabling simultaneous handling of a plurality of articles, for instance, for facilitating the transport of a plurality of articles at the same time. For many articles, such as beverage containers, for example, bundles of a plurality of articles held together thus represent the most frequent type of sales units.
The articles can be, for instance, objects, such as, for example, packaged or unpackaged objects, containers, such as beverage bottles or cans, or in themselves bundles, in turn, of a plurality of objects, in which the objects of a bundle can be held together, for instance, by means of an embracing around the periphery of a group of objects, such as, for instance, a strapping, an outer packaging, such as a wrapping, a shrink tube, or a cardboard packaging or a carrying rack, such as a beverage crate, to name but a few conceivable embodiments.
Among others, folded boxes are used as outer packagings respectively accommodating one or more articles, because these folded boxes offer a high, and, as the case may be, additional protection for the articles accommodated therein, because they are in addition stackable together with the articles accommodated therein, and because they moreover enable identifying the articles accommodated therein by means of information printed or glued onto their outside. They can further serve as advertising media by the corresponding information on their outside.
Folded box are industrially prefabricated, mostly cuboid-shaped containers having been collapsed or folded to particularly small dimensions or pack sizes, which are space-savingly transported and stored in a folded state until they are used, in order to be easily unfolded by hand or machine, when they are needed, to form an outer packaging, as this is known from the folded boxes used for postal packages, for instance. In a collapsed state, they require little space for their transport and storage.
Outer packagings formed by containers executed as folded boxes, for instance, can be designed with or without compartments, also termed so-called baskets, arranged or arrangeable therein for separating and/or keeping apart individual articles from each other.
So-called interior fittings to be arranged or being arranged in an outer packaging, which interior fittings can consist, for instance, of dividers slotted into each other and/or connected with each other, for instance, by bending edges and/or adhesive joints, are termed compartments.
The dividers can consist of cardboard and/or paperboard or plastics, for instance. For instance, corrugated cardboard can be used for the dividers to protect sensitive articles. The dividers are and/or are to be connected with each other by bending edges and/or adhesive joints and/or slots in the dividers such that compartments are produced with, for example, a rectangular or a triangular or a polyangular base, provided for respectively one or more articles, which are fastened against shifting in the compartments.
To summarize, compartments assign fixed positions to the articles within the outer packagings and thus protect them, during the further transport and/or during the storage of the outer packagings accommodating these articles until the articles are withdrawn and consumed, for instance, from colliding with each other and rubbing against each other, which otherwise would lead to a negative impression of the quality by scuffing, for instance, of information applied onto the articles in the form of labels, for example, and/or by the articles damaging each other.
So-called blind compartments or blind cells can be realized at the outer edge of a set of compartments, which can be formed, for example, to be too small for the reception of articles. Blind compartments or blind cells at the periphery of a set of compartments inserted into an outer packaging or arranged in an outer packaging afford a further protection of articles accommodated in the outer packaging, for example in the instance of mechanical stress and/or deformation of outer packagings accommodating articles.
In analogy to the supply of folded boxes as outer packagings, compartments to be inserted into outer packagings are preferentially prefabricated and collapsed or folded to particularly small dimensions or pack sizes so that they can be space-savingly transported and stored in a folded state until they are used, in order to be easily unfolded by hand or machine when they are needed.
Outer packagings with compartments already arranged therein are moreover known. These can be designed as folded boxes with interior fittings arranged therein, which are also transported and stored in a collapsed or folded state, and which are easily unfolded by hand or machine when they are needed.
Representatively for the described outer packagings designed as unfoldable or erectable folded boxes to be easily unfolded by hand or machine when they are needed as well as foldable and unfoldable compartments just as well as outer packagings designed as folded boxes with compartments arranged therein, the term compartments and/or outer packagings will be used, which comprises the three different design variants, unless something else, for instance, only one of the design variants, is mentioned.
Compartments and/or outer packagings are preferentially produced from single- or multi-part cardboard packagings of stabilized paper, such as cardboard and/or paperboard, for example. There are cardboard packagings in different thicknesses and sizes for all types of compartments and/or outer packagings. For the protection of sensitive articles, corrugated cardboard can be used, for example.
Folded or collapsed cardboard packagings, which are unfoldable or expandable to form compartments and/or outer packagings, have cardboard packaging walls, which are interconnected with each other by bending edges and/or adhesive joints and/or slot-in connections, and which can be cut out or punched out, for instance, from sheet-formed material. In a collapsed state, at least two cardboard packaging walls connected with each other form a top and a bottom flat side, respectively, of a flatly collapsed cardboard packaging.
A collapsed cardboard packaging can be unfolded to form a set of compartments and/or an outer packaging, for instance, by pressure onto the sides of the collapsed cardboard packaging. It is just as well possible to hold the collapsed cardboard packaging at the surfaces of one cardboard packaging wall of its top and bottom flat sides, respectively, by means of suction cups, for instance, and to expand it by increasing the distance between the surfaces of the cardboard packaging walls, which distance is initially limited to the thickness dimension of the collapsed cardboard packaging. By the cardboard packaging walls being interconnected with each other, cardboard packaging walls of the cardboard packaging are also unfolded or expanded, which are arranged within the space spread out by the cardboard packaging walls of the top and bottom flat sides.
Combinations of unfolding by lateral pressure and expanding are also possible.
In the instance of an outer packaging designed as a folded box, unfolding or expanding leads to creating an interior space, and in the instance of a set of compartments that is foldable and unfoldable or in the instance of an outer packaging designed as a folded box with compartments already arranged therein, unfolding or expanding leads to creating an interior space for each cell of the compartment, which interior space is accessible by an access opening, or, as the case may be, by respectively one access opening each, spreading open a plane running normal to the cardboard packaging walls, through which access opening articles can be introduced into the respective interior space.
In handling articles, for instance, in food technology and/or beverage technology and/or packaging technology and/or in the food industry and/or beverage industry and/or packaging industry, pacing, i.e. being able to handle as many articles as possible within an as short as possible time span, represents a significant cost factor. The faster the pacing, the higher is the article throughput, and the better is thus the utilization of the machines, facilities, and devices intended for this purpose. Pacing can thus be described as the ratio of the number of articles to the period of time within which this number of articles is handled.
In order to be able to achieve high pacings, fully automatic apparatuses, also called unfolding machines or erecting machines or, termed for short unfolders or erectors, are used in the packaging technology and in the packaging industry for unfolding and/or expanding cardboard packagings to compartments and/or outer packagings, which unfolders or erectors, in connection with the staging of folded or collapsed cardboard packagings, remove a folded or collapsed cardboard packaging from a cardboard packaging supply and expand and/or unfold it to a set of compartments and/or to an outer packaging within fractions of seconds.
From WO 2013/053646 A1, an apparatus and a method are known for the combined expanding and unfolding of cardboard packagings to a cover of a container. A cardboard packaging supply in the form of a standing, lying, or hanging magazine accommodates flatly collapsed cardboard packagings being pressed against a removal side of the magazine by a compressive and consisting respectively of four cardboard packaging walls connected with each other along bending edges running in parallel, with respectively two of the cardboard packaging walls forming a top and a bottom flat side—or, in the instance of a lying arrangement of the magazine, a front and rear flat side—of a flatly collapsed cardboard packaging. The removal side of the magazine releases respectively one flat side. A gripper seizes one of the cardboard packaging walls of the flat side of the cardboard packaging located at the removal side of the magazine and pulls the seized cardboard packaging wall and thus the entire cardboard packaging along a path of movement out of the magazine. The path of movement describes a quarter-circular path along which the cardboard packaging wall seized by the gripper undergoes a 90-degrees pivoting movement about an axis running in parallel to the bending edges. During this movement, the cardboard packaging wall, which is not seized by the gripper, of the flat side released by the magazine, which cardboard packaging wall not seized by the gripper in the flatly collapsed state of the cardboard packaging encloses a dull angle of at least approximately 180 degrees with the cardboard packaging wall seized by the gripper, glides along a guiding slot, which, at the end of the path of movement, forces the cardboard packaging wall not seized by the gripper to take an angle of 90 degrees in relation to the cardboard packaging wall seized by the gripper such that a rectangular cross section of the cover is achieved. The separately produced bottom and the separately produced lid of the container are subsequently connected with the cover and the container is filled.
In the lying arrangement of the magazine, the covers can be expanded and unfolded in a standing position. The space requirement of this lying magazine in the horizontal direction is, however, substantial. The arrangement moreover has the disadvantage that the cardboard packagings stored in the magazine and necessarily pressed against the removal side of the magazine for the lying arrangement can get caught, such as is unfortunately known from paper towel dispensers.
Another not insubstantial cost factor in handling articles is the space requirement for the construction of the equipment technology. The greatest cost factor in this context is the required floor space, because most of the facilities do not fully use the ceiling height commonly available in production halls.
A contribution to realizing a minimal horizontal space requirement needed for an as small as possible floor space can be achieved by the cardboard packagings being stacked for storage in a vertical direction.
A disadvantage of this is that the cardboard packagings have to be removed in a lying position and transferred to a device arranged as nearby as possible to their storage, which device expands and/or unfolds the cardboard packagings to compartments and/or outer packagings by an opposite application of force, for instance, by pulling at a cardboard packaging wall of its top and bottom flat sides, respectively, and/or by pressing at their outer bending edges.
A contribution to realizing a minimal horizontal space requirement needed for an as small as possible floor space can also be achieved by the expanding or unfolding of cardboard packagings to compartments and/or outer packagings being carried out as little as possible in a horizontal direction, preferably exclusively in a vertical direction.
A disadvantage of this is that the flatly collapsed cardboard packagings in this way have to be expanded or unfolded in a lying position, whereby access openings, through which articles can be introduced into the interior spaces of the thus created compartments and/or outer packagings, respectively spread open a vertical plane standing normal upon the cardboard packaging walls forming the flat sides of the cardboard packaging. In order to be able to introduce articles into compartments and/or outer packagings, which articles are commonly handled in a standing position until they are placed into a set of compartments and/or into an outer packaging, either the articles have to be laid so that they can be introduced through the access openings, or the compartments and/or outer packagings have to be erected so that the access openings are on a horizontal plane.
This can be carried out by, subsequently to the expanding of flatly collapsed cardboard packagings by means of suction cups, which are movable normal to a plane formed by the flat sides of the still flatly collapsed cardboard packagings, the said suction cups, after expanding the cardboard packaging to lying compartments and/or outer packagings, not releasing them yet, but rather first being rotated about a horizontal pivoting axis before they release the cardboard packaging wall seized by them.
It is obvious that this pivoting of the vertically movable suction cups still requires a substantial amount of space in a horizontal direction. The additional movement path of the suction cups, which are necessarily vertically movable for the purpose of expanding, furthermore negatively affects the achievable pacing.